第38章

Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum." "But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?" "Then how can she say the Shemang either?"Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and silenced both the bondwomen: "The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is a thief." There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp in the days of the Governor's marriage.This person was an old negro, bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of either.

For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everbody.In his dark cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat and drink of his meagre substance.

Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his own great trouble, he tried away for him.

"Father," cried the lad," does it not say in the good book that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much?""It does, my son," said the Taleb "You have truth.What then?""Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover," said Ali.

It was a sweet instance of simple faith.The old black Taleb dismissed his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.

The negro's prayer was simple to childishness.It told God everything;it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away and might not know.The maiden was sick unto death.She had been three days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing.

She was blind and dumb and deaf.Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be broken and his very soul in peril.

Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.

And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and Naomi lay still on her pillow.The hot flush faded from her cheeks;her features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.

The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted "El hamdu l'Illah!" (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down the deep furrows of his streaming face.And then, as if to complete the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and wondrous thing befell.First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow.Her eyes were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.

Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound.

It was a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter.

And then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of dread.

So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and they were shouting "Hallelujah!" with one voice, thinking only that she who had been dead to them was alive again.But the old Taleb cried eagerly, "Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing! I know what it is--who knows so well as I?

Once I was deaf, my children, but now I hear.Listen!

The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.Listen!

A watery humour had gathered in her head.It has gone, it has flowed away.Now she will hear.Listen, for it is Ithat know it--who knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf.

Her ears will be opened.She will hear.Once she was living in a land of silence; now she is coming into the land of sound.

Blessed be God, for He has wrought this wondrous work.God is great!